“We don’t do the costings… we get our costings done by the Parliamentary Budget Office that is very independent of us and indeed of the government.”

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Full statement from Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen

“Today in the Australian Financial Review we have seen, yet again, vested property interests putting out new data attacking Labor’s reforms – unverified, unseen. Where is the data that underpins their claims? Anecdotal? “Superficial” analysis? Very murky.

Let’s call this out for what it is – vested interests seeking to undermine and distract because they have personal interests in seeing the current arrangements continue.

As late as February this year, Grattan Institute stated that “around 90 per cent of investment lending is for existing housing”.

Federal Labor’s reforms are driven by putting negative gearing to work to support new construction.

As for shrill claims that the Parliamentary Budget Office’s costing of Labor’s policy is wrong, the PBO stands by the costing that underpinned the announcement made on
29 March 2019.

The PBO consulted with the ABS, the RBA and major banks in order to estimate the proportion of investor lending for the purpose of existing housing.

The PBO costing has relied on ABS data on owner-occupier lending with other data sources, including unpublished data by the RBA regarding lending to households for residential property investment, and other surveys of investor lending.

Our policy has been fully costed by the independent PBO – in fact, the policy costing confirms that we will see people switch from negatively gearing existing properties to new properties increasing demand and incentives to build more stock.”